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Minister rolls up sleeves to close the Yilgarn gap

Minister for Agriculture Ken Baston (centre) with member for Eyre Graham Jacobs (right) and DAFWA state barrier fence project manager Craig Robins (left) at the start of the Yilgarn gap barrier fence.

Tara De Landgrafft

Western Australia's Agriculture Minister has rolled up his sleeves and helped hammer in the first fence posts for the Yilgarn gap project.

The project, which consists of a 170km long, vermin proof fence, will help keep wild dogs and other feral animals out of the state's agricultural region.

Agriculture minister and former pastoralist, Ken Baston, says he was a bit rusty with the fencing pliers, but he's happy to see the project finally up and running.

"Its very important that we increase the productivity of agriculture in Western Australia and this is is one of the ways that we can do this in the agricultural area by allowing them to run their small stock units such as sheep without any problems of dogs coming in and destroying those animals," Mr Baston said.

The project is due to be finished in October, which will make the full span of state barrier fence 1206km in length, something that Viv Reid, director of invasive species at the Department of Agriculture and food says has been a joint effort.

"The shires were pivotal in negotiations, contributions, making their financial contribution, through the planning process, it was slow.

"We learnt a lot going through it but its a process that needs to be gone through to ensure that the impact to the environment is minimised and there was a significant consideration to heritage, aboriginal and more recently European," Mr Reid said.

Jim Sullivan, chair of the Eastern Wheatbelt regional biosecurity group, says the project has probably taken too long to get up and running, but he hopes now it's started it will give farmers confidence to go back into small stock production in the region.

"It certainly will give them incentive to come back in.

"We've been sort of 20 years pushing this project along trying to get this gap filled in to try and get the farmers in the area who have really had a problem with wild dogs."